Elvis Costello

In time you can turn these obsessions into careers," sings Elvis Costello on Mighty Like a
Rose. This is true. Almost a decade and a half after emerging as punk's brightest angry
young man, Costello faces a musical midlife crisis. Will his caustic anger, once so cathartic
and cleansing, congeal into bitterness? Is he stuck romanticizing his pain, or will he break
through to some hard-won understanding and resolution? The usual pall of desp... More >

Too often his pessimism sounds like not just bitterness but spite. He didn't take over the world, and is he mad--not only can't he make the personal political, he can't even make it popular. The Mitchell Froom-produced arrangements here are stuck between Tom Waits as Kurt Weill and Tom Waits as Jackson Browne--Randy Newman is beyond them. So as performed, the good songs are overblown tragedies, the bad ones overblown trifles. The best is the simplest because it's the simplest--"Playboy to a Man," love to hear John Hiatt rockabilly it. The most tragic is the chiliastic "Other Side of Summer," recommended to punk bands in the market for a song with a lot of words in it. And I admit "Invasion Hit Parade" almost makes the spiteful political. Its theory of life is that fascism has a great deal in common with songs you don't like on the radio. (Grade: C+)